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Hold On 3:200:00/3:20
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Lonely Boy 3:130:00/3:13
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Owning Up 4:250:00/4:25
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I'm One 3:340:00/3:34
Electronic Press Kit
AIMEE VAN DYNE
Folk-Americana Singer-Songwriter
Aimee Van Dyne's new album, Broken Love Songs, has placed in multiple Songwriting Competitions and received radio airplay on over 100 stations around the world. Some highlights include:
2022 International Acoustic Music Awards (IAMA) Runner Up, AAA/Alternative Category: "Why Should I Care?"
2022 John Lennon Songwriting Contest Finalist, Country Category: 'Lonely Me'
2022 John Lennon Songwriting Contest Finalist, Folk Category: 'Hold On'
#45 on the July Alt-Country Chart
#20 Top Album on the July FAI Folk Chart
#27 Top Artist on the July FAI Folk Chart
#20 on the Roots Music Report's Weekly Top 50 Massachusetts Artist Album Chart
#30 on the Roots Music Report's Weekly Top 50 Massachusetts Artist Song Chart for "Lonely Me"
#31 on the Roots Music Report's Weekly Top 50 Massachusetts Song Chart for "Broken Love Songs"
Placed on WVIA's top 40 AAA (Adult Alternative Album) playlist 4 weeks in a row
Folk/Americana singer-songwriter Aimee Van Dyne hails from Brooklyn, but currently calls Berkshire County her home. In New York, she has performed at venues such as The Bitter End and Rockwood Music Hall, where her live performances have been described as “three of the best voices in town soar(ing) through a uniquely imaginative blend of ideas.” Her original songs, a distinctive blend of Folk/Americana and Pop/Rock, are characterized by “catchy choruses and melodies that frequently evoke the thoughtful, George Harrison-side of the Beatles.” (New York Music Daily)
She is currently promoting her new CD, “Broken Love Songs” which was produced by multi-instrumentalist Jim Henry (Tracy Grammer, Eliza Gilkyson) and features a first-class team of musicians, including Jon Carroll (Mary Chapin Carpenter), Paul Kochanski (Lori McKenna), and Jon Graboff (Ryan Adams).
Aimee began writing songs while still a student at Brown University and then continued to write and record while studying architecture at The Cooper Union. In 2001, she released her first EP, “Owning Up,” while working as an architect in NYC. After taking time off to raise her twin daughters, Aimee embarked on a new journey, moving up to The Berkshires to pursue a career in music full-time. Her new CD is available at her web site, http://www.aimeevandyne.com, as well as all streaming services.
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Press / Reviews
"Aimee Van Dyne's . . . confidence and craft is evident . . . both on her recordings and her performances" John Platt, Host of WFUV's Sunday Supper, Curator and host of "On Your Radar" at Rockwood Music Hall, NYC
A majestic Return For Harmony Rock Songwriter Aimee Van Dyne
NEW YORK MUSIC DAILY
Back in the mid-zeros, Aimee Van Dyne led the best harmony-rock band in New York. They were on the quiet, more immersive side, with a lushly distinctive, disarmingly sophisticated vocal counterpoint that was neither baroque nor high lonesome. Van Dyne was trained as an architect, which no doubt informs the durable beauty and often intricate craftsmanship of her songs. Her sound, which remains consistent to this day, is a blend of artsy pop, Americana, and the more delicate acoustic styles that trace back to her formative years in the 90s, with a biting, knowing lyricism. Van Dyne has returned with a brand new album, Broken Love Songs - streaming at her music page -which includes both new material as well as concert favorites from that era.
Unsurprisingly, the most stunning aspect of the record is Van Dyne's vocals. She was a strong singer in 2005, and since then her range has expanded even further, with a warmly mapled, crystalline delivery possibly inspired by her new digs in the Berkshire mountains. On the new album she sings all the parts that Kathleen Hunt and Nina Soka would have filled out during the band's time playing around what was then a fertile crucible for music on the Lower East Side.
The loosely connecting thread between the songs is going into the wilderness and emerging intact. The opening track, ‘Lonely Me’ is an old live standard from the New York days, reinvented with a brisk backbeat from bassist Paul Kochanski and drummer JJ O’Connell, while Jon Graboff's pedal steel floats solemnly overhead. Jim Henry, who helmed the instrumental side of the project, adds layers of acoustic and electric guitars: it is astonishing that an album recorded remotely during the lockdown could sound so cohesive.
Henry's mandolin flickers amid Van Dyne's anthemic vocal orchestration in the album's title track, the interweave between the stringed instruments mirroring her vocal dexterity. Van Dyne paints a guardedly victorious lakeside tableau in ‘I'm One,’ Ben Kohn's spare piano lowlighting a tale of staring down a "tangled web of half-truths.”
"On the other side of all that sorrow brings, find your wings," Van Dyne instructs in ‘Hold On,’ a luscious blend of lushness and twang. There's a soulful roots reggae tune hidden inside ‘Lonely Boy,’ Kohn adding romping piano and slinky organ: it's one of the album's catchiest tunes. Greg Snedeker's cello soars over the bed of guitars in ‘Why Should I Care,’ a rugged individualist's anthem from Van Dyne's earlier days: the harmonies are more tightly constructed this time around. ‘The Story of Me’ is a disarmingly devastating tale of walking wounded, the self-deception and emotional workarounds that those who've been traumatized can fall back on (the song is way more poetic than that mundane description would suggest). Craig Akin's somber bowed bass and Kohn's tersely Romantic piano anchor ‘Unbroken Love,’ a resolute look at finding inner strength under duress. The new version of ‘Owning Up’ - the title track to Van Dyne's debut CD - has a welcome symphonic sweep: there are flying buttresses on this newly sturdy structure.
The edgiest song on the album is ‘Not Even You,’ a defiant kiss-off number, Henry's incisive fingerpicking underneath Graboff's ominous washes of steel. Van Dyne winds up the record with the fondly soaring ‘Together at Last,’ assembled around Henry's mandolin and Jon Carroll's accordion. Needless to say, it's inspiring to see Van Dyne reasserting the understated power she first made a name for herself with in this city.